Gospel Address No 2
Matthew 17: 22 to end. March
7th, 1871.
In the first three gospels
the Lord is presented to the Jews, and they reject Him. In John He is rejected
from the first. But He says, "I will have My sheep." Nothing can
touch His grace; if man cannot understand the grace in which He came, He goes
on with it still. He is always the same. No matter what failure or rejection or
stupidity He meets, He is the same.
What poor failing creatures
we are. He may have to chasten us and deal with us: it only shows His watchful
grace! We can lean on a heart that never changes in grace, and never can change
in power. In ups and downs, rejections and receptions, He never changes. The
thread runs all through of what He was - God revealed in man: perfect, constant
grace.
Then comes His death,
without which we could have no part in the blessing. In dying He has taken a
new place, founded on redemption; and now I find, not only that He is
unchanged, but He has wrought a work the value of which is unchanged, and which
is the ground of eternal blessedness.
Redemption remains
unchanged, and whatever is built on that has an eternal character. He
associates us completely with Himself in the effect of that. When He spoke of
His death His disciples were "exceeding sorry." We know it as the
foundation truth of salvation, but we don't like the cross a bit better for
ourselves than they did. He shows them their association with Himself, and
says, "Then are the children free." They were children of the King,
Peter as much as Himself. He is Jehovah, and knows and can do all things; and
now, this truth of death having come in, He can put them into His place. He
brings them all through into the same place with Himself. His heart brings us
there; and the thing for us is to walk in the consciousness of it, to walk in
the sense that that is what is in Christ's heart. He shows us His love
by manifesting it down here, but He takes us up too. If I am to walk in the
Father's love, I know Christ is in it. Being in this place, I taste the perfect
love of Christ to Him in it. I confide and trust in His love, with
heart-confidence in the love of Christ which does pass knowledge, but which we
know and confide in. I obey and adore Him, but I see the way He has brought my
heart back to confidence in Him, in what we have found to be the way He thinks
about us.
In the Lord's Table I find He attaches importance to, our
remembering Him; not that we are anything, but if I have a friend I like
him to think of me when I am away because I love him. There must be redemption;
but this is the expression of the heart of Christ putting us into this place.
If Christ takes my heart, I am thinking of pleasing Him. He has possession of
my heart; that is really practical sanctification. I judge myself as a poor ruined
creature, and walk in intercourse with Christ. Sorrows and troubles I have, but
He never changes; and nothing can separate me from His love, for they are only
creature things that come on me, and His love is divine, the love of God.
JND